My problem with this blog, aside from my unparalleled ability to lose track of time, has always been me not knowing what to post about. So, I’ve decided to just post about whatever is going on in my world. Is this a win, or a loss, for you, the reader?

Only time will tell…

In the time lapsed since last I posted, sort of a lot has happened. I’m not going to go over it all, but here’s a recap:
Kalijor Press now has 8 novels in print. The Keys of Kalijor series is finished and it has been followed by the Aegis Protocol (Daray’s origin story), It Never Raynes (the story of Rayne, Riana and Vincent’s Daughter, about 20 years after the Fifth Key closes), and Essequibo River (the Story of Tal Renner, and the roving gipsy band, Pandora Celtica, and their attempts to right some wrongs by subverting a few laws).

I’ve also finished and published a new Role Playing Game, with the help of my friend and partner, Chris McCown. It is called Falling Stars, and it is published by Lock ‘n Load Publishing as their very first RPG. They have many other board, card, and war games, plus a video game and now have branched out into RPGs. At present, Falling Stars has a 400+ page core book; a 90+ page Quickstart book that is sold in a Beginner’s Game box that includes maps, tokens, dice, character portfolios, and a short story to introduce players to the world; a 90+ page Module with three chapters and 9-20 hours of game play, and a pack of 11 maps that includes two ships and a space station, all gorgeously illustrated and in 1 inch/28mm scale (perfect not just for this game, but for any sci-fi game in the same scale).

I also produced a 20,000 word short story for the GenCon 2016 anthology, Missing Pieces, in print now.

In 2016 I wrote two new novels, and have two others in revision/editing. I hope to publish at least two novels this year, plus a couple novellas, and finish up the last couple of books for the initial releases for the Falling Stars RPG. After that, I have a new game I’m working on, and need to go back over the Kalijor RPG to look at the rules and decide if I want to do a version 2 for balance and game play clean-up, or just proceed into sourcebooks and support material, leaving the rules as-is.

Anyway, that’s the recap of the past coulee years, and here we go into 2017!

I hope you all have an amazing year and very much look forward to interacting with as many of you as I can, whether it be at cons, or through the ‘net.

I figured it was high time I posted something here to change things up a bit from all that stagnation and what-not. I know I keep saying I’ll post more often, and I fully intend to, but things happen, life gets in the way, and I get so buried in projects that I just forget. That said, I will keep trying. I am nothing, if not persistent!

News

Not a lot in the way of news lately. We just got back from Genghis Con where we ran some awesome games, chatted with some great fans, both new and old, and had a generally great time.

Conventions

The next convention we will be attending is Anomoly Con in the Denver Tech Center. It’s a fantastic mixed-genre con with a huge literary and media focus. This will be our first year there, but the con itself has been going on for quite some time and is always very highly spoken of. I will be on numerous panels throughout the weekend, with topics like Deus Ex Machina, The Villain Dilemma, Improv and Adlib Storytelling, and much more! We’ll have a table with books available and look forward to seeing everyone at the con. Please bring some awesome questions for the tons of great panelists that will be there with us.

After Anomoly (which is March 28-30 by the way) our next con will be StarFest, which has been moved for this year only to May 2-4. It will be returning to its normal late April time frame next year. We will be releasing our new novel, ‘The Aegis Protocol’ at StarFest this year. It is, without a doubt, the best novel we’ve done to date and I am super excited to share it with everyone!

Novels

As mentioned before, ‘The Aegis Protocol’ is fast nearing completion. I am going through the final major revisions now and all that remains after that is some short edits on a couple spots, then typesetting and layout. The cover art has been assigned out and things are moving along nicely for a StarFest 2014 release!

Once ‘The Aegis Protocol’ is in the can here in the next few weeks, I will jump into revisions on the next novel ‘The Turin Gambit’. It is Alina’s origin story (she’s made some cameos in the Kalijor books and has a much larger part in ‘The Aegis Protocol’) and is more about a young woman learning who she is and how she is strong enough to take control of her world to get out room under the thumbs of those who would try to control her. It’s less of an action story (although there certainly is some action) and very character driven. I very much look forward to sharing it with you. 🙂

After that will be a couple more Daray books (a small series that is already all written) followed by one or two more Alina books (depending on how the editing goes), and then some more for Daray and her new family.

I am really pleased to say that I am now into a backlog of already written books that means I can start getting stuff edited and revised long before release. This means I can get higher quality books out to you guys on a less-compressed time table and still keep writing new material to add to the other end of the line. I’ve been trying to get here for a while now and I know it will benefit everyone.

RPG

Sales are slow, but they are happening! Folks that play the game are saying good things about it so it’s just a matter of getting people to play.

The first sourcebook is nearing the completion of the writing phase (just a bit of work on the GM section yet to go) and will be entering play testing very soon. I’ve even finished the rough layout and have built the art assignments but I cannot assign art out and begin the final publication processes until the man books are ‘in the black’, as it were. They aren’t too far off, but only core book sales will get us there so tell your friends and family that the sooner they pick up a copy, the sooner they can start getting their hands on sourcebooks that will expand the world and begin to really share the depth of the Kalijor universe.

Also, I had a great hour and change chat with a couple guys from a Colorado game developer about the Kalijor game engine and setting. They had some great things to say, as well as a couple awesome tips that I will be working on going forward. It’s always nice to meet folks with experience who are willing to share it in a constructive way. Together we lift each other up!

In Conclusion

Okay, so I think that’s about it for now. I’ll post a panel schedule for Anomoly Con as soon as it is finalized and, as usual, I promise to try harder to keep up regular posts here. 😛

I hope everyone is doing well, and I look forward to seeing you all out there, somewhere!

*Hangs head in shame* Yes, I am aware that I am a habitually bad blogger/updater. I’ve kind of made peace with that aspect of my personality, but I do regret inflicting it upon those who have expectations that don’t jive with my crazy. To those of you who watch this space, I do apologize for the infrequent updates. I would swear I’ll do better, but that usually only lasts a month or two before I start slacking again, so I’m not making any promises. So, I’ll make an effort, but in the interim, check out the below! Some of you may not be aware that Kalijor Press has an affiliation with an awesome company called G33k & Co. which is an organization dedicated to the expansion of the geek consciousness and arm geeks young and young-at-heart with the tools they need to face the world and spread a little love. Well, one of our peers in G33k & Co. is the SurReal Mother Geek who has an amazing book of nursery rhymes and parables that have been ‘geekified’ for your pleasure. The book is superbly illustrated, and masterfully worded and I highly recommend that you check it out, even if you don’t have kids. But if you do have younger kids, then you need to give it a look as it is the ultimate primer for your progeny! You can check it out at their FaceBook page, or pick up a copy on Kindle, iPad, or dead-tree formats! Personally, I like the iPad version as it is completely interactive with sounds, animations, hidden items to find and seek, voice-over (if you want it), and pronunciation of words to help kids learn to read and speak! Okay, on to Kalijor Press News. 🙂

Novels

The First Key of Kalijor is now free on as many eReader platforms as I could make that happen. A couple of them have some kind of restriction saying you can’t change it to free if you’ve ever charged money for it, so on a couple it is $0.99. Most price match though, so you can probably still get it for free if you send an email their way, but it is free on Amazon and iBooks which are the two big ones. Please, tell your friends and family! Well, the Aegis Protocol is mostly through editing and rewrite. The last couple of chapters are still with the editor and rewrite is caught up so as soon as I have those last few chapters I can hammer out the rest and get it in for round two of major editing. We’re still looking good for a StarFest 2014 release and I still feel this is my best work yet so I am very much looking forward to sharing it with everyone. As soon as Aegis Protocol is in the can, I will start the next big rewrite on The Turin Gambit and then hand it off to editing, hopefully in first quarter 2014, giving them an unprecedented amount of time to really work it over and hammer out all the little things that tend to slip through. I am still writing another Daray/Lana story, and a novel with a set of new characters that takes place about 20-25 years after the Fifth Key, and I have several books written and lined up for rewrite after the Turin Gambit is cleaned up.

Kalijor RPG

The Kalijor RPG core book is now available from all major booksellers! Most will have to order it in, but they all have access to it now, so if you ask, they can get it. Amazon currently has it on sale for about $5 off regular retail. The Kalijor: Kids core book will be the next to get through the retail quagmire, but it will have to wait until after the first of the year as I am still pretty backed up on projects right now. It is still available from our store here at Kalijor.com, and if you email me I can hook you up with autographed copies as well. Also, both books are available on iBooks and at DriveThruRPG.com. Either (or both) would make a great gift for a family of gamers this holiday season, or any other day. I am currently working on a rewrite of the first scheduled sourcebook for the game, Rathalon! It is shaping up nicely and is about 80% done at this point. I’ve even begun building the art list and doing layout/formatting on the finished parts of the book so it really is close. The caveat to all of this though, is that I need the core books to get into the black before I can afford to buy more art for the supplements, so the more copies we can move, the faster that can happen. I have about 20 pages of the next sourcebook written (The Earth Ring Station) already, as well as a bunch of other material for subsequent books that is all growing slowly as I have moments here and there. The other big RPG project I am working on right now are two adventure supplements. One of which takes place entirely in the ‘real world’ of the future and involves a mysterious ship and a pair of warring Artificial Intelligences. The other takes place in both Kalijor and ‘the real world’ and, oddly enough, also involves an artificial intelligence, only this one is sentient and seeking something that nobody is sure is a good thing, or a bad thing if it should acquire it. Both campaigns are shaping up to be quite the ride for players and they are testing well with my groups. Scads of new equipment, NPC’s, creatures, places, and more a sprinkled throughout both and I am really looking forward to getting them cleaned up and ready for you guys to check out!

Conventions

2014 is shaping up to be a pretty busy year for Kalijor Press. Around all of the production we are doing we also have numerous conventions that we will be attending, both as a vendor, and as a guest. Right now the list looks thus: Genghis Con Anomoly Con StarFest Denver Comic Con GenCon TactiCon MAL Con MileHi Con We are looking at a couple of others as well, namely Wasabi and Nan Desu Kan, plus a little con in January, although that may not happen at this late stage. We’ll be looking to run games at every opportunity while at con, and I will be a guest (or mod) on panels at many of those conventions as well. Also, I know I am listed as a guest on the GalaxyFest 2014 website, but unless I receive some communication from the organizers of that convention, Kalijor Press will ~not~ be in attendance there. So, if you were hoping we’d be there, then please contact the convention and have them get hold of us to discuss the con. Lastly, I’m still hoping to get a couple local walk-in games going at shops in the Denver area, but thus far I have been so swamped with production that I haven’t had the time to go pound the sidewalk and get them set up. Stay tuned for more on that front. Okay, I think that’s bout it for this round. I’ll try to update more frequently, but I am not promising anything. I hope you all have an amazing day, and a stupendous ChristmaHaunnaKwanzaDanivuS! End of Line… Paul

Usually, I love seeing reviews, even if they have negative comments in them. I think it’s largely because I work really hard at self-improvement and negative comments are generally able to be translated into opportunities for improvement.

This one though, I am having trouble with, and I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because the reviewer said the only really good thing about the book was the art. On the one hand, I like that they enjoyed the art. I worked really hard to pull together a bunch of artists that I thought could do the world justice and I am very proud of what they have produced. On the other hand though, many of the comments they made, I am having trouble seeing as anything useful, or even meaningful.

There were some valid criticisms, to be sure. One was a lack of detailed world info for both settings within the book This is something that I am painfully aware of and has been an issue that has been discussed at great length around the testing table for years. I know there isn’t a ton of detailed information about the setting, but there is enough to get things rolling. Unfortunately, I had to make a call on content. I had a lot of information to present, and the nature of the world I was describing sort of necessitated that both the fantasy and science fiction settings made their debuts in the core book. This meant pushing the volume of the book to pretty large proportions and, thus, raising the cost of the book to the end user, especially when the cost of art is considered. I had to draw a line in the sand and make a call on what would get into print, and what would have to be handled in supplements, or on the web site.

Maybe it wasn’t the best call, but I’m new at this and it should come as no surprise that I drop an occasional ball. I am currently working to rectify this issue by posting free campaign and world information on this very web site for players to avail themselves of. It may not be ideal, but I am trying to bridge the gap and show my support for those who have decided to give the game a shot!

The reviewer in question basically calls the Kalijor RPG a rip off of Palladium Books’ system. While I cannot deny that I am a huge fan of the Palladium Books game system, I really must take exception to a comment such as that. All I can imagine is that the reviewer looked no further than the most basic of combat mechanics, saw some similarity, and wrote off the entirety of the rest of the material without looking it over.

Is my combat system a copy of Palladium Books’ combat system? Hell no!

Are there similarities, even parallels? Hell yes!

It is in the DNA of every person alive to find deficiency, I thoroughly believe that. It’s in our very nature to identify the things we don’t like about, well, whatever it is we encounter/use. For a few, let’s call them creators, or maybe innovators, those deficiencies become the driving force behind entire lives.

We didn’t get from telegrams to super-phones in 200 years without people seeing how something worked, identifying things they didn’t like about them, and then hitting the books and work benches to make improvements. We can’t help it. As I said, it’s in our DNA.

The game industry is no different. Gamers the world around pick up books and play games for years, decades even, and without exception, they find little things about systems that they would change ‘if they had their way’, or ‘if they’d been in charge’. Every RPG out there today is the direct result of players picking up the first one and saying to themselves, “this is pretty cool, but what if…”.

So, did I copy Palladium’s combat system? No. But I took the parts of it that I loved, and blended them with the parts that I, and others, thought could improve it. I did years of research, and more years of play testing with dozens of groups in cities all over the west and mid-west. I learned to do statistical analysis to arrive at the simplest dice solution that would result in the best, character driven combat solution that I could build, and would want to play with. I didn’t just copy the Palladium rules and change 1D20 to 2D10. I didn’t simply change one form of health/armor tracking to another and pass it off as my own. But it is likely that there are hints and glimmers of a bunch of different concepts from other game systems in mine. But I did tip my hat to a combat system that I grew up playing with, and still love to this day.

Beyond that, I wrote, from scratch, an entirely new system of skills, abilities, magic, alignments, and more. I’ve written a system that not only keeps the great, story-centric combat feel of Palladium, but also increases the importance and impact of skill selection, on combat. Not only that, but the system also goes to great length to make sure that characters with a strong mental focus can compete with those who have a strong physical focus in many stages; something the Palladium system does not account for. The Kalijor system can be played dieceless if players want, and it is dovetailed into the Grow With Me RPG system which means kids of extremely young age and people who’ve never touched an RPG before can learn to play with this system, then use it, with increasing levels of logistical complexity and detail, their entire lives!

I can’t even completely express how different this new RPG is from Palladium’s games, but this review makes it sound like it’s just a clone, or worse yet, outright plagiarized. Does it not occur to someone that something like a table can only be presented in so many ways? And of those ways, only a few carry a certain efficiency with them that works well, and quickly, in print?

I know it’s just one review, and I know it is, as the title of this tirade suggests, merely the vocal minority. I’ve had dozens of people email me or catch me at a con and tell me how much the love the game. Yes, there have been suggestions for improvement, and they are being looked at very seriously. Yes there have been questions about world content and campaign tools, and those are also being worked on, and many of them provided for free on the new Kalijor (almost) daily page here at Kalijor.com. But feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

So, why the tirade? I don’t know. I think because the review seemed so… half-done? It bugs me that I cannot answer the review with some thoughts without seeming defensive. Maybe I am being just that here, but in the end, this is my blog and I can shout about whatever I want, right? I need more reviews to balance this one out, but the folks that play the game happily and enjoy it rarely write reviews. As with any product or service, the majority of folks only talk publicly about it if they have problems with it. But, since reviews do influence purchasing decisions, having only a single review that is largely negative is a bad thing, even though said review appears to be wholly incomplete and laser focused on a single aspect of the game.

I guess I’m whining because my job getting the word out just got much more difficult than it already was. I’ve chosen a tough, uphill fight, being a self-published author and game developer, and I know that public opinion is something that I will always have to contend with, and that it will not always be positive or supportive. But man, it feels like folks should take the time to look over and talk about the entire product before they speak out, you know?

Okay, I think that’s about enough of that.

In other news, the rewrite of ‘The Aegis Protocol’ is progressing nicely and the book is on track for release at StarFest 2014.

The RPG is heading back into the retail approval channel this weekend and will hopefully start showing up in book stores this year.

The web page is going to start sporting more source material for the RPG over time, and a couple campaigns have already been posted for your use.

The first two Kalijor RPG sourcebooks are fully written and just need editing, layout, and art, as soon as the core books are in the proverbial black, which isn’t too far off. I hope to be able to assign artwork beginning in first or second quarter 2014. Sooner would be awesome, but sales aren’t quite that high yet, and I am all out of conventions for the year.

Conventions are being added to the 2014 roster, and we’ll be at more than ever next year! Including a table and games at Genghis Con, massive participation at Anomoly Con, and much more.

Progress on the newest novel has slowed during the rewrite of ‘The Aegis Protocol’ but is still forging ahead.

The next novel, tentatively called ‘The Turin Gambit’ will go into revision and editing as soon as ‘The Aegis Protocol’ is buttoned up.

And… I think that’s about it for now.

I’m going to go create some stuff.

And remember, folks. Please leave reviews for the things you buy, but please make sure they are complete reviews, reflective of the entire product, not just the bits you glance over in passing.

Friday, October 18:
LARPing: Past, Present, and Future 5pm in Wind River A
Readings: Guns, Magic, and Mayhem 10pm in Mesa Verde A

Saturday, October 19:
The How and Why of NaNoWriMo 4pm in Wind River B

I’m also going to try and get some pickup Kalijor RPG sessions going in the game area, so if you want to check out the game, swing by and let us know. It only takes a few people to play, but the more the merrier so if you have a group you’d like to play with, bring them all along!

Author’s Avenue has been moved to the second floor lobby where pre-registration has been the past few years. We’ll be set up there during dealer’s hall hours and we’ll have the full range of novels, short story books, RPG books, and SurReal Mother Geek books as well!

That said, I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow and throughout the weekend!